Games you gave up on 2022

[Raging Justice]

Arietta of Spirits



There's nothing particularly bad about this game. I just found it...boring. It's sort of a Zelda clone but with boring combat, boring exploration, and zero puzzles. I keep waiting for the game to give me some cool upgrades, or different types of weapons, or for the enemies to get more interesting...never happens. The storytelling and characters are pretty decent and the environments have nice attention to detail for a 2d, retro game (seeing birds in trees fly away as you come near, seeing butterflies fly about some flowers, hearing the sounds of wind near a beach, or your own feet as you walk through a puddle) but I hate to give the game a pass because of these things. Gameplay should be the main focus for a game of this type

The game is described as a game with an "emotion-filled narrative" and "no-filler" gameplay. Let me translate that for you:

"We put all of our effort into the story, not the gameplay"

The Artful Escape



This one's even worse. It's a borderline walking simulator. It has some cool characters, some witty and funny dialog, and some amazing, trippy visuals but...I don't care. I want to play a video game, and this feels like something that should have been a TV series or animated movie. Why they thought video games were the right medium for this is beyond me.

[Raging Justice]

Upon further reflection I should also add that Arietta of Spirits' story revolves around a character who can go between the physical and spirit realm...yet the gameplay never makes use of that in any way, shape, or form. What's even the point then?

[Green_Warrior]

Pokemon Legends Arceus on Switch has a great concept, but the execution is infuriating. Imagine if in the old games, after catching some pokemon, you had to go back to the first town and scroll through 10 mins of mediocre story constantly? The series never would have taken off. Pokemon needs to do itself a favor and just let their players play the game. Because Arceus' game play is fun. It's a good idea and I hope the series goes in that direction. But man, every time I hear that professor's music, I groan. Every time I'm informed to go back to the village, I groan harder. Every time I sit there eating the same dinner and get told very obvious things by the professor and assistant, I feel like I'm way too old to be playing this game.

But then I remember, the old games were made for kids too, and there was very little hand-holding involved. You could ask NPCs about things if you wanted to, but it was optional. If Pokemon wants to take a cue from Breath of the Wild and open things up, they've also got to embrace the philosophy of player freedom. Give a little more credit to kids. They can figure some things out on their own, if not most things. Arceus is way too tied to a story that just isn't very interesting. And it forces itself down the player's throat too often, destroying the pacing of the game. At least, early on. I've played about 10 hours now which feels like enough time to gauge that this one's just not for me. Dropping it for now, but maybe I'll get back to it some day.

[GKBracken]

Pokemon Legends Arceus on Switch has a great concept, but the execution is infuriating. Imagine if in the old games, after catching some pokemon, you had to go back to the first town and scroll through 10 mins of mediocre story constantly? The series never would have taken off. Pokemon needs to do itself a favor and just let their players play the game. Because Arceus' game play is fun. It's a good idea and I hope the series goes in that direction. But man, every time I hear that professor's music, I groan. Every time I'm informed to go back to the village, I groan harder. Every time I sit there eating the same dinner and get told very obvious things by the professor and assistant, I feel like I'm way too old to be playing this game.

But then I remember, the old games were made for kids too, and there was very little hand-holding involved. You could ask NPCs about things if you wanted to, but it was optional. If Pokemon wants to take a cue from Breath of the Wild and open things up, they've also got to embrace the philosophy of player freedom. Give a little more credit to kids. They can figure some things out on their own, if not most things. Arceus is way too tied to a story that just isn't very interesting. And it forces itself down the player's throat too often, destroying the pacing of the game. At least, early on. I've played about 10 hours now which feels like enough time to gauge that this one's just not for me. Dropping it for now, but maybe I'll get back to it some day.

The series sort of drifted from its roots once they peaked with Black 2/White 2. I feel like X&Y were a great reset for the franchise, with a focus towards a much, much more guided experience than ever before. This approach, for me at least, kind of hit its nadir in Ultra Sun and Moon where an actual fantastic game is buckled at the knees for its firsts 10-15 hours with tutorials, set-pieces and cutscenes. It's disappointing to read PCA is keeping up some of the modern series' bad habits as I'd been hearing a lot of positive things about the game.